The politics of militant bullshit right-wing grievance are fun and games until someone gets killed, and by that measure, it hasn't been fun and games since mid-1930s.
Cruz doesn't give a shit, of course. Trolling the libs is all his voters expect from him. He's happy with that... https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1330360255449100294

Others, of course, have quickly pointed to the horrible irony of Ted's flaunting his stupid turkey at the imaginary liberals who want to take it for some reason, while thousands of Texans wait hours in line for food. I won't be the next guy to do the same. I have a different beef

Ted's message has a very basic appeal to people who dream of living out their fantasy of defending their rights, weapons in hand, from hypothetical hordes of folks they despise: liberals, college kids, inner-city black people, immigrants, Antifa... Soros? All of them?...

99% of suburban gun nuts masturbate to this fantasy of winning a heroic OK Corral shootout against murderous invaders. 0% of them will ever have a chance to. It is sad, in a way, until they, fired up by obliging GOP fearmongers like Ted, go actively looking for their chance...

And this is how you get Michigan Capitol invaders brandishing their dick extenders and yelling at cops. This is how you get the St. Louis pink-polo Rambo and wife losing their shit all over their lawn. And, ultimately, this is how you get Kyle Rittenhouse and the Michigan militia

For, you see, 99.999% of gun nuts are, to use a technical term, pussies. I haven't shot an actual gun since I was 16 and never plan to again in my life, and I could beat up any one of them with a frying pan without breaking into sweat. They are decadent, bored, suburban pussies..

Most of them are morbidly obese, many are scared to death of anyone who doesn't look like them, 100% are intimidated by unfamiliar food. They are more likely to shoot themselves in the dick than anyone else, and that's hard because most of them can't even see their dicks...

However, most of them are also adults who have accumulated a substantial amount of life experience, even if most of it has been rather pointless. And they understand that actually shooting a gun involves consequences they'd rather not face...

They know that as long as they merely brandish their toys and yell at cops' faces, then, by virtue of being white, they are gonna be fine. Actually pulling that trigger unleashes a world of possibilities they have never contemplated when jerking off to their fantasies...

But they know about them, viscerally, so they will never shoot. They are soft and entitled, which is the worst possible combination for becoming a deadly warrior.
But, once in a while, someone will come along who will actually act these fantasies out...

Someone young enough to not understand consequences. Or someone stupid enough to not care about them. Someone like Kyle Rittenhouse, who would have made a perfect Hitlerjugend in the 1940s, or someone like the Michigan would-be kidnappers who are actually violently insane...

And by fostering fantasies of warrior glory in suburban Rambos for the sake of their votes, the GOP is also cultivating actual murderers who, unlike the pink-polo commandoes, will happily pull the trigger. Will act the fantasies out. Will go looking for people to kill...

Rittenhouse won't be the last one. Not all crazy plots will fail. More "heroes" will be elevated by the right. Killing liberals will become normalized. Some suburban pussies may actually be convinced that pulling the trigger won't have dire consequences. You finish this story.